Life Extension

Religion leers:
“Join me, or you face death,”
And History jeers,
“Inevitable death.”
But Science still adheres
To schemes to postpone death.
The path of a thousand years
Starts with a single breath.

Published online in Bewildering Stories #746, 21 January 2018

Haiku - Young Man

Where's the young man gone
Who lived in mirrors so long?
Putting old masks on.

Published online in The Asses of Parnassus, 11 January 2018

Body Modding

It starts with teeth, for even the healthiest:
Fillings put in, and “extra” teeth pulled out
Or realigned, the whole jaw moved about,
New faces for the kids of the wealthiest.
Tonsils, appendix, out. The stealthiest
Inject, use pills, every fluid reroute
With tourniquets, with tampons, condoms... flout
Flow, through to adult nappies. Atheist
As Science makes us with creative powers,
We add pumps, implants, radio, wires, chips,
Casually as tattoos, replacement hips;
Graft patchwork skin from humans, pigs, plants, flowers,
Joined in flamboyant Frankensteinish suture,
Racing against decay to cyborg future.

Published online in Snakeskin, January 2018

ON ROUSSEAU'S 'DREAM'

I will be a flutist

Standing in the trees

With the lions and tigers

Stalking past my knees;

You, my naked lady

Languid on a couch -

Is the tiger standing,

Or is it in a crouch?

Enormous tropic blossoms

Open in the heat;

Your hand is out toward me,

The pipe I play is sweet.

You have no need to answer

If things are as they seem.

The scene will last forever,

A moment and a dream.

Published: The Lyric, USA, Summer 2014

DIATRIBE AGAINST UNVERSED POETS

Ignoring clockwork towns and fertile farms
Tied to the sun-swing as the seas to moon,
They searched for verse in deserts without rhyme,
Lifted erratic rocks nonrhythmically
In search of poetry, then through the slough
Of their emotions hunted for a trail:

“The scent is cold. Its Spirit must have fled;
The body of its work, though dead,
Has been translated to some higher plane.
Look how the world’s translated verse
Comes to us plain—why can’t we emulate?
Then if the words themselves are unimportant,
If poetry in essence is idea,
And song is wrong,
Rhyme a superfluous flamboyance
(Like colour to Van Gogh),
Rhythm a distraction to the memoring mind,
Then we determine poetry’s true form is mime!”

While in the air the deafening blare
Confounds their silence everywhere:
Before our hearts began to beat
We were conceived in rhythmic heat;
So, billions strong, we sing along
For all the time, in time, our time, the song
Goes rocking on in rhythmic rhyme. Rock on!

Published online: Snakeskin, UK, September 2009

AUNTIE'S MODEL NIECE

Auntie got her
Maid to knit a
Set of under-
Wear,

For my frozen
Sister Flo's end
That was posing
Bare;

Flo then wore 'em
With decorum
And she swore 'em
Grand,

Undismayed by
Undies made by
Auntie's maid by
Hand!

Published online: Snakeskin, UK, August 2008